{"id":152,"date":"2009-09-25T12:13:09","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T04:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=152"},"modified":"2009-09-25T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T04:15:09","slug":"biking-into-scooters-%e2%80%a6-and-other-things-that-happen-on-the-way-to-school%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/?p=152","title":{"rendered":"Biking into Scooters \u2026 and other things that happen on the way to school\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
Once again, this week has not been without adventure.\u00a0<\/div>\n

Saturday was my usual 3rd grade\/7th grade routine.\u00a0 I\u2019m starting to warm up to the\u00a03rd graders, but they are still pretty chaotic in the classroom.\u00a0 I have one student who is 6 years old (yes\u2014in my\u00a03rd grade class).\u00a0 He just got back from living in the states for two years.\u00a0 His oral English is surprisingly clear and he would put any American\u00a03rd grader to shame with his reading skills.\u00a0 However, he has zero attention span!\u00a0 I just don\u2019t know what to do with him!\u00a0 He actually reminds me of my middle-schoolers from last year.\u00a0 It\u2019s funny to hear a little Chinese boy insert \u201clike\u201d between most of the words in his sentences.\u00a0 I think he does this when he is nervous.\u00a0 His personality also surprises me.\u00a0 He is very outgoing.\u00a0 I will definitely keep you posted on him.<\/p>\n

My 7th \u00a0graders surprised me with their written English skills.\u00a0 They struggle with a few sentence structure items, but their thoughts are awesome!\u00a0 I can\u2019t wait to read more of their writing.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to assign a lot of writing when: 1. you know the students will complete it\u2014all of it, and 2. you only have seven students\u2019 work to read.\u00a0 We had some fun discussions about The Secret Garden<\/em>.\u00a0 They devour books like they are going out of style.\u00a0 Who would have thought that I would be teaching the same thing in China as I was in the states? I certainly did not!\u00a0 During class last Saturday, they wrote letters to American 7th graders.\u00a0 We are going to try to start a pen-pal activity with some of my former 6th grade students from Watertown.\u00a0 My Chinese students are very excited about communicating with an American student.\u00a0 At first, they didn\u2019t know what to write.\u00a0 So we brainstormed ideas of what to write about.\u00a0 I can\u2019t wait for the Americans to get the letters.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, we had our morning service. This was the debut of my trumpeting in Beijing!\u00a0 We Beijingren \u5317\u4eac\u4eba\u00a0like to change things up in our services.\u00a0 For Sunday, I played trumpet for three hymns (one with piano, one with guitar, one solo).\u00a0 Afterwards we had lunch as a group and then another teacher and I went for a brisk walk in the park!\u00a0 The park was busy with people walking (forwards and backwards), sitting on benches, playing random instruments out of tune, and babysitting grandchildren.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had quite a few beautiful blue sky days.\u00a0 Anticipation of these days makes the other ones much more bearable.<\/p>\n

My Sinopec men continue to work their way into my heart.\u00a0 My heart still aches for them because they are so far away from their families.\u00a0 They seem to be making the best out of their situations. They have really warmed up during class.\u00a0 At first I was hesitant to try games and activities with them.\u00a0 They seem to enjoy some of the \u2018silly\u2019 things that I try with them.\u00a0 Yesterday I shared my Peanut Butter M&Ms with them.\u00a0 They said they liked them, but I wonder if they were just being polite.\u00a0 They are also very punctual.\u00a0 I give them two ten-minute breaks during our three-and-a-half hour class.\u00a0 They always come back in exactly ten minutes! However, yesterday they were \u2018hanging out\u2019 on a rooftop area having a very animated discussion in Chinese.\u00a0 The time slipped right by them!\u00a0 I had to go looking for my usually punctual students!\u00a0 They sort of giggled (if you can imagine grown men giggling) when I came to find them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the break time, while my students were hanging out on the roof, I was watching out my window at the window-washers across the way.\u00a0 It seems like their method is so unsafe.\u00a0 I\u2019ve included a picture for you to see.\u00a0 I also have a picture of the cars that they covered up because they didn\u2019t want to get them wet. (Actually, this is an assumption of mine, but why else would they put what looks like a really big sheet over them!?!) \u00a0Also included in the pictures is one of the Sinopec \u2018campus\u2019 where I teach.\u00a0 The photo was taken from my classroom window across to the dorms\/cafeteria.<\/p>\n

This week we finally welcomed the family that was missing from our group in Beijing!\u00a0 It is so nice to have them here.\u00a0 It feels like our group is complete now.\u00a0 It was also fun to see their reactions to things happening on the way home from the airport.\u00a0 I am sure that is what I looked like when I first arrived, and that was only a month ago!\u00a0 So much has happened in the last few weeks that I feel like I\u2019ve been here for a very long time already.\u00a0\u00a0I hope that we can help them adjust as quickly as we did!<\/p>\n

Update on Beijing Extreme Biking: I feel more and more confident as the days go by.\u00a0 This may or may not be a dangerous thing!\u00a0 Yesterday I ran into a guy on a scooter because there was confusion as to which way each of us was going.\u00a0 I feel like this is going to happen more and more.\u00a0 At least\u00a0I now know that it doesn’t hurt that bad.\u00a0 Also, (not really biking related) I got a ride with the other teachers from Sinopec to the subway yesterday. When I was getting out, the driver kept inching forward and the back wheel got my ankle.\u00a0 Thankfully, I was able to pull my foot out before the tire ran over it! \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 I may have to change it from Beijing Extreme Biking to Beijing Extreme Transportation-in-general.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Highlights of the week: Sunday service, practicing using a spoon and a fork with my engineers (and one of them turning them around to use them as chopsticks!), welcoming the Krauses, and visiting the post office by myself to mail an envelope back to America (Meiguo)\u00a0\u7f8e\u56fd and having a conversation with the clerk with gestures only. (She wanted me to write the characters for America \u7f8e\u56fd on the package and I sort of looked like a little kid that wants something so she giggled and took the envelope back to write them for me.) I am going to be so good at charades when I get back!\u00a0 I also think that I should probably learn to write the characters for America.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the photos!\u00a0 Until next time…<\/p>\n

\"View

View of Sinopec from my classroom window<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Covered

Covered cars...so they don't get wet?<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Window

Window Washers<\/p><\/div>\n

\"View

View of the whole building. They are all the way up there with only two cords and what appears to be a tree swing holding them up.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, this week has not been without adventure.\u00a0 Saturday was my usual 3rd grade\/7th grade routine.\u00a0 I\u2019m starting to warm up to the\u00a03rd graders, but they are still pretty chaotic in the classroom.\u00a0 I have one student who is 6 years old (yes\u2014in my\u00a03rd grade class).\u00a0 He just got back from living in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amber.schlomer.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}